DESCRIPTION: The Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) is designed to provide training in the assessment of mental disorder, the analysis of service provision to juvenile offenders, and statistical modeling. Expertise in these areas is vital for the effective study of mental health needs and services among juvenile delinquent populations. Recent studies have indicated that the prevalence of mental health disturbances among incarcerated adolescents is exceptionally high. Although there is reason to believe that such disturbances play an important role in shaping a youth's response to services, very little is known about the fundamental issues of how well a youth's mental illness is detected and assessed, how assessments influence the types of services received, or how mental health problems and the processes of psychosocial development influence youths' engagement in services. This award will ensure that my background as a researcher in adolescent development is enriched by developing an in-depth understanding of the clinical, forensic, and service-related issues that are critical to consider in future studies of service provision to delinquent populations. In addition, this award will provide the opportunity to obtain specialized training in the use of advanced statistical techniques for modeling developmental trajectories, a skill that will be needed to assess the interactions between development and service experience in this group. Finally, this award will allow me to conduct a series of interrelated studies to address the under explored relations among the assessment process in juvenile justice, mental illness, psychosocial development, and service utilization and perception in adolescent offenders. This research will not only provide new insights about how services are prescribed for and received by adolescent offenders, but it will also provide a starting point from which more comprehensive longitudinal studies of such relations and effects can be developed. This award is designed to further my own development as an expert in mental health and juvenile justice issues, and to advance our understanding of how interventions can be tailored to the specific developmental and mental health characteristics of adolescent offenders.